Transparent OLED Displays for Retail: Help People See what to Buy

Retail is all about eye candy.

Now someone trained in the intricacies of design and psychology might want to give a more nuanced description of all the aspects that go into creating a successful retail space, but in the end, it mostly boils down to finding ways to focus the attention of customers on specific things.

The Brain Follows the Eye

Of all the senses that human beings possess, vision is by far the most dominant. There are more and larger regions of the brain devoted to processing vision than any other sense. And it’s not surprising since vision has been so vitally important to human survival throughout history.

We are primed to look first and think later. We notice motion and differences as an automatic response. After that our brains begin to engage and decode more information like color, distance, shape, and size. Only after all of that has happened – in a fraction of a second – do our conscious thoughts catch up to what’s going on.

So, what does that have to do with retail and eye candy?

Displays that Entice

Most retail environments use static displays. Signs, posters, placards, and banners are all used to create the illusions of motion and difference in the environment, to draw people’s eyes, and to keep their attention long enough to engage their conscious thoughts. Retail designers have become adept at using all the tools they have to mimic motion. Some places even hire a person to stand outside with a sign and move it around, just to engage people’s automatic vision response.

The Planar® LookThru™ OLED display is the eye candy without the tricks.

Transparent Displays in Retail

Imagine that instead of printing signs for every sale, every season, and every product that a full-color, high-definition display could replace all of that. Now imagine that the display wouldn’t obscure the products that it’s meant to promote. A transparent display can be updated daily or hourly if desired. It can provide actual motion instead of the illusion of movement. It can engage the brains of shoppers more easily than static signs.

With the Planar LookThru OLED display creating the eye candy of retail is easier than ever.